"Does she love our child more than me?"

How one new dad feels -- and deals -- when the baby arrives and steals his wife's heart.

Today, not even three years after our wedding, I woke up in bed alone. Again. My wife, Susan, has slipped out to breast-feed our 14-month-old son, Jackson. Curled up with him on the extra bed in the nursery, she often falls asleep there. Which means she's not coming back to me. I know in my heart that my wife loves me. But could she actually love someone else even more?

At first, I thought, Who could honestly complain about this? A newborn needs and deserves all the attention you can give. In the beginning, I was eager to do every small task to make my wife, to make them, more comfortable, from fetching the bunny blanket to doing diaper duty. But lately, I've been feeling like my role has been reduced to being the family Jeeves. What about my needs?

When I encountered rival suitors during my dating years, I knew my best chance involved removing the other man from the equation. So I invited my wife out to dinner. Alone. Cagily, she professed to look forward to it. "Just us," I think she said. No sooner had we sat down at a nearby trattoria and drawn the napkins across our laps than it became clear there was no "just us," and there might never be again. "Would you call the sitter, see if he's okay?" Susan asked.

"We just left him five minutes ago," I pleaded over the glasses of wine we hadn't yet tasted. "I'm sure he's fine."

"But I miss him," Susan said. I knew there was no reasoning with that. Love is love. Soon after our entrées arrived, she confessed that she wanted to get home to tuck him in. I paddleboated the plate of fusilli alla verdura into my mouth to keep up with her pacing, and we dashed home. Alas, alas! He was already asleep, and I made my move. "Let's go to bed," I said, and, after coaxing her there, complimented her lingerie: a nursing bra. "Those snaps in the front are very convenient," I joked. But I knew this convenience had nothing to do with me. Not only has my son taken control of my wife's every thought, he has enforced his presence on every inch of her body, inserting himself between her and me.

I recounted date night to my pal Jurgen, a father of two. He nodded vigorously halfway through the story, knowing exactly what I was experiencing. "And are you getting the 'talking at you' yet?" he asked.

"What's that?"

"When your wife starts talking at you about the kids, not with you."

"Like giving you a report card on their progress?"

"Yeah, like you don't have anything to do with them, like they're hers."

"Wow," I said.

"You're not kidding," Jurgen continued enthusiastically, raising his voice. Clearly I had touched a nerve. "One day you're the most important guy in the world because you put on a tuxedo and say 'I do,' and the next you're just the guy who carries in the diaper bales from Sam's Club."

When I asked some other friends with kids if they had similar feelings, most men felt that, yes, their wives did love the kids more and could provide a legal pad full of examples:

What she says: "I'm cooking a special meal."

What you think: Swordfish steaks.

What she means: Special for the kids, doofus. (Homemade macaroni and cheese!)

What she says: "I'm going to bed early."

What you think: Action, finally!

What she means: She wants to have energy for the kids in the morning.

What she says: "I ordered a great new video."

What you think: Kill Bill, Volume 2.

What she means: Baby MacDonald: A Day on the Farm.

What baffled me was not their stories, but how unfazed they were by their emotional abandonment, as if they were, unlike me, resigned to the fact that they could never be as important as the kids. What's more, they warned me that talking about it with my wife would only make things worse, that my feelings of dissatisfaction or loneliness would only be belittled or lampooned. Of course, I had to learn the hard way.

"You think you're the only one who's overextended?" Susan asked icily when I pointed out the lack of quality time she and I had been having together.

"No, I never said that," I said. "It's just that, between all the diapers and the feedings and the cleanings, there's no more room for us."

She looked at me like she was unsure if she was offended that I said this sucks or moved that somewhere in there, I had said I miss her.

"Don't worry, it'll get better," she said reassuringly.

I agreed with her at the time, but later wondered: Would it get better, ever? To find out, I phoned my friend Keith. Happily married for the past 20 years, Keith has three children. After conceding that, yeah, he suspects his wife does love his kids more than him, I asked him how he has dealt with it. Silence. I pressed again.

"Okay," he said like a dare, "porn."

"Seriously?"

"The fact of the matter is this: All men deal with loneliness in one of four ways: booze, porn, adultery or golf."

Additional conversations I had with my male friends on this topic yielded similarly unappealing answers. I really was not relishing the idea of a lifetime measured in four-stroke bogies or point-click hard-ons, so I decided I needed to speak to someone who had made it out alive and crossed to the other side. Dad.

"Yeah, I suppose, probably," he said in his typically effusive Minnesotan style of complaint, "there were times when I felt a little shut out."

"So, what did you do?" I demanded.

"Do? There was nothing to do. You grin and bear it."

"But it must have bothered you, being second fiddle all of a sudden."

"Yeah, I guess," he said, "but it's just something I learned to accept. Things would return to normal when all you kids were at camp, or especially when you all were in college, but the other times had highs and lows, sure. I mean, motherhood is just beyond our comprehension."

Like superstring theory or why women find Tobey Maguire attractive? At first it seemed like a stock answer, an easy rationalization, that the "bond" between women and their children is unknowable to men. But whether I accepted this explanation or kept searching for others, there was one thing I knew for sure at this point: There's no changing it. For the foreseeable future, in my wife's eyes, Jackson comes first. I come second. So who am I miffed at -- Jackson? Of course not. He's just being a toddler, and I love him more than anything. Susan? Well, maybe a little. But what sort of woman would she be if she didn't care for Jackson so much, even at my expense?

Maybe over time I'll learn that my situation's not so bad. Growing up in Minnesota, a friend and I often joked that the state motto should be, "We're number two!" The Vikings made it to several Super Bowls and lost. Every new skyscraper was built almost as tall, but never taller, than the IDS tower. In deference to New York City, Minneapolis branded itself "the mini apple." At times, the entire state celebrated being in second place. Only recently have I begun to take my eyes off the thrill of being number one and concentrate on the particular romance of being number two. Men, we are Minnesota. And you know what? It's nice there.

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